VNSNY’s EVP and Chief of Provider Operations, Marki Flannery, highlights how home care agencies like VNSNY, play an essential role in advancing public health issues like vaccinations, safe home environments, healthy lifestyle choices, and community support networks.

Touch is an especially powerful tool of nonverbal communication, and when someone is ill, the power of touch can be amplified. In this article, Susan Northover, VNSNY’s SVP of Intake and Patient Care Services, and VNSNY clinicians share how touch, along with verbal communication, eye contact and active listening, can be used as an essential tool to advance both the physical and emotional healing of patients.

Marki Flannery highlights examples of new partnership models between acute-care hospitals, community physicians, and home healthcare organizations like VNSNY. Learn about VNSNY’s innovative partnerships, including collaborations designed to help avoid hospital admissions, help patients transition home from the hospital sooner, or help to manage chronic physical and mental illnesses.

In this article, Rosemary Baughn, SVP of VNSNY Hospice and Palliative Care, highlights several initiatives underway to reach populations that have historically under-utilized hospice care, using education, collaboration, and better access to replace old myths, fear and barriers. These efforts include Project HOPE, which works with community residents and care providers in Harlem, and the hospice program for veterans, which was recently awarded a We Honor Veterans Level Four Partner designation

Expanding the skill sets of Home Health Aides (HHAs) is one of the key components to helping the growing population of older Americans age in place successfully. In this article, Marki Flannery, VNSNY’s EVP and Chief of Provider Operations, cites findings from a recent study which showed that home care clients who were cared for by HHAs with advanced training had 24% fewer visits to the ER.

VNSNY Behavioral Health nurse, Suzette Santos, shares how the use of VNSNY’s new model of care for behavioral health, which empowers clinicians to take a proactive approach, helped her to improve her patient’s physical and mental health conditions. This story is indicative of how health care organizations, including VNSNY, are moving toward an integrated view of physical and behavioral health, with early screening and treatment of mental health disorders.